The disagreement between writers such as Goody and writers who have taken a similar line to myself is not over whether literacy can be involved in great social changes, whether it can facilitate communication and the storage of information or whether it has become, in many places, a mechanism for operating social distinction. We are all agreed about this. In fact, all the points the author makes about the Iban, as he generously acknowledges in several places in the paper, are points I have made myself in relation to the Merina in a number of articles reproduced in How we think they think (Bloch 1998; originally Bloch 1968, 1989, 1994).